Karaoke as Gender Performance: Don't You Want Me

You're in New York, Lower East Side. You just had dinner at an Indian restaurant advertising live music. The restaurant turns out to be mostly empty, aside from this white man plucking a sitar. Strange. But it doesn't faze you. You're just hyped for karaoke.

That's about where I was that wintry Saturday night, flanked by my best friend Celeste. It was a girls' night out for two pairs of sisters: Celeste and Hortense and Victoire and me. The idea was to find a Korean karaoke spot at St. Mark's Place and have a fun night before we exploded across New England once more: Hortense to Cornell, Celeste to Brooklyn, and me to Providence.

We finally find a place, advertised by a lit-up sign, coaxing us down a narrow corridor into a dingy elevator. Once we're there, the place is nearly empty. We put down a deposit and pile into a tiny room: there's a monitor on the wall and two binders full of songs.

We start off easy: "Take on Me" by A-ha does to our vocal cords what a carpet beater does to a welcome mat. It's good practice. The Human League's "Don't You Want Me" is where Kevin Brown's thesis materializes. While I perform the macho guy's verse, Celeste performs the feminine counterpart: "I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar." She holds a hand to her face in affected nostalgia. I belt out "don't you want me baby," and arch all the way back on the "O-o-o-oh," gripping a microphone that no longer works. I've become a dude convinced of his own sex-appeal. My movements are Elvis meets Sting, hip gyration but also tremors.

I take on a similar persona when Eminem comes on. Suddenly, I'm able to hit all the lyrics in "Real Slim Shady," even that tricky third verse, almost instinctually, bouncing with the beat. Karaoke is puzzlingly good for self-affirmation. I enjoy performing masculinity. And like Nora in Brown's piece, performing karaoke as a macho man reveals little about my true identity, except that I seek out spaces where experimentation is condoned. Being surrounded by girls I trust doesn't hurt. In fact, when I tried karaoke in a bar last summer, my rendition of "Real Slim Shady" was horrifying. I feared that the strangers present (especially the men) would see me as a failure. Now, Brown's piece has me thinking that maybe failure is the point when it comes to karaoke.

For the most part, I'm expected to act how I look. During karaoke, the personalities in my head with the smallest voices rush forth and scream out. At the end of the day, I have confessed myself to Victoire, Celeste and Hortense, as they have confessed to me. We tried out different personas and failed as a group, in relative privacy. If I wake up with a sore throat the next morning, at least I know I gave it my all.